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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Day 2 of our little “Waltz Across Texas”

Today’s 48 mile ride was a pleasant cruise through a beautiful serene desert. We ended up at a small little gas station at the Dell City turn off. Out here in this dusty patch of nowhere an old man spends his day (7:30 - 7:30) in a small room with a small satellite connected television and a icebox full cold drinks selling gas to those poor souls that forgot that there was 120 mile stretch of gasoline void between White City and El Paso (with the single exception of this one. Which of course becomes a wonderful short lesson teaching the law of supply and demand. It strikes home immediately when they peer out of their car window a view a price that is about 25% higher then the one at home. The old guy spends his day out there with 2 big tom turkeys that act as greeters to anyone that stops for gas (they especially love motorcycles), a big golden rooster and a sleek guinea hen. The proprietor, with no hesitation, gives us permission to pitch anywhere “outback”.We see a nice spot of soft brown grass that would be a nice flat place to erect our little fabric home for the night. We roll the bike right out to it and I put my hand down to pat the ground and …ouchie… owwie…. There is at least 10 goat head stickers in the palm of my hand. We turn and look at the tires on our bike. Yep! They’re both full of those nasty little buggers. We are smack dab in the middle of Goat Head Paradise. After several minutes of picking we gently roll the bike to the dirt area of the front. Picking as we go along. Our one salvation being that we weren’t riding the bike, adding our heavy bodies to the weight pushing those horns into our tubes and we must be living clean and thinking pure thoughts because we don’t get a flat, but there is no way we are going to be able to set up the tent with our inflatable sleeping pads out there in Sticker Land; so we look around and off to the side we spy a old cement foundation where once a small trailer stood.So the tent will be set up on cement, but that’s no problem (after we sweep the stickers off) ‘cause our thermolite inflatable mattresses are absolutely wonderful. There is a wee bit of a problem when we notice that we are right below a large light so tonight there will be no need for a flashlight in the tent; but hey, it’s free so as we wave good bye to the owner who heads off toward Dell City we, and the animals, settle down for the night in enough light to make an amusement park proud.